A Study On The Impact Of Environmental Regulation On Industrial Restructuring—A Perspective Of Spatial Heterogeneity

Environmental problems and the adjustment of industrial structure are two of the major problems in China's economy.Faced with the increasing pressure of economic downturn,the economic development pattern of high energy consumption and high pollution in China is highly required adjustment in the direction of intensity and ecologicalization.This requires lowering speed of economic development,improving environmental standards and optimizing the industrial structure in order to release the economic potential.Then the question is that whether the environmental regulation and industrial restructuring can achieve a win-win situation.For the sake of studying the influence of environmental regulation on the industrial structure adjustment,a theoretical study and an empirical analysis are conducted.Firstly,the relationship between the environmental regulation(ER)and the industrial structure adjustment is analyzed,whose results show nonlinear feature of the first inhibition,the latter promotion and the further inhibition and also show some specificity because of the differences between regions.Secondly,this paper adopts the principal component analysis(PCA)to measure the intensity of environmental regulation of Chinese provinces,and then conducts the dynamic panel model with System GMM and panel threshold model to test the relationship between ER and the industrial structure adjustment from the perspective of spatial heterogeneity.The studies reveal that:(1)At state level,there is a U-shape relationship between environmental regulation and the industrial structure adjustment.In the east,the ER and the industrial structure adjustment appears an inverted “U” type relationship.In the central and western region,the ER is in a significant “U” type relationship with the industrial structure adjustment,which is consistent with the result at state level,but whose coefficients are much lower than the whole country's.(2)The results of the panel threshold regression divide 30 Chinese provinces into three groups named by "weak regulation","moderate regulation" and "strong regulation".The three kinds of intensity of environmental regulation have a nonlinear impact on the industrial structure adjustment featured by first inhibition,the latter promotion and the further inhibition,confirming the conclusion of the previous mathematical model.In order to realize that the environmental regulation effectively forces the adjustment of industrial structure,it provides some policy implications,which are developing differentiated intensity of environmental regulation,encouraging enterprises to proceed technological innovation,avoiding the "pollution haven" effect and optimizing the forms of the environmental regulation.